soundcard/audio on 9150/9170

So I heard there was bad headphone audio on these computers: Sager NP9170 Gaming Laptop Review (Clevo P170EM) - YouTube skip to 18:11
and someone on the 7970M thread also complained.

I was wondering what you guys think and if there is a fix?

(I'm getting close to purchasing the 9150 with the 7970m, once utilization issues get fixed completely)

 

For me, the sound from built-in speakers and my 2.1 Creative external speakers (8 years old) is OK. The only time I don't like is when using the headphones.

However, I usually play games with built-in speakers or the external speakers so I can hear ambient sounds, that's why I'm quite happy with it

 

There really is not "fix". To get better audio a USB sound card is recommended. Asus Zonar ones are nice.

 

5.1 will work without an external soundcard. use the headphones/mic in/spdif which give speaker out options and i havnt found anything wrong with sound at all.
ive not used headphones so cant comment on that. im using 8 year old creative 5.1 speakers and to be honest i usually only have the front two plugged in which give of plenty of bass on their own and are great in game. all 3 plugged in is ruddy amazing.

 

It's not the soundcard chip, it's just the normal Realtek one. And the speakers are fine too. The problem is the OpAmp I think Clevo chose to use. Probably a really horrible one, which is weird since OpAmps are generally ridiculously cheap.

That was just a guess, I don't know what the problem is. I don't understand how Clevo messed it up since even the cheapest audio players you can get at a dollar store has better audio. The cheapest DA and OpAmp today are better than what I'm hearing here. Very confusing to me.

For headphone I just use the X-Fi Go USB, which powers my headphone and mic plenty good. I hear the Asus Xonar USB dongle is good and as well as the Turtlebeach. I don't mind using a dongle since these sound better than any laptop headphone output anyway to me.

 

do you think segar will fix this issue with their next model? and when will their next model come out?

 

you mean clevo fix the issue

 

...yes i'm sure everyone understands that

 

To me, it seems like the laptop just widens the 'bandwidth' of sound quality. My bad headphones sound ridiculously bad, but my good headphones sound perfectly fine. Depending upon what you are looking for, it might be better to just get a decent pair of headphones and spend some time tweaking the sound settings on the laptop than it would be to get a USB dongle.

 

Your good headphones I guess aren't very good. The opposite is what happens with good headphones... Source bad, good headphones makes it the worst possible since you'll hear all the flaws.

 

This was my conclusion as well. I don't actually think I've heard sound worse than this from any of the previous laptops I've owned; it's that bad. Whoever put together the bits that make up the sound parts of the laptop should be ashamed of himself.

I bought the FiiO E10 USB DAC headphone amp off of Amazon and haven't looked back since. It's a little tedious with the small, external box, but the great and virtually noise-free sound more than makes up for it.

 

I own a NP9150, and I think the issue is the card's ability to drive headphones. I use a set of ATH-M30 headphones, and if I plug them into the laptop I get no bass or volume. However, if I use an adapter to connect the headphone jack to my 100W stereo receiver and then connect the headphones to that, It sounds great. This is while listening to lossless audio files, with ASIO4ALL, laptop volume cranked, and with treble and bass settings on the receiver set to flat. There is some background noise in the card, but I usually don't find it to be a problem. I have also noticed that this card has very little digital distortion, as the conextant card in my old laptop alwayrs sounded bad with low-level sounds.